You’re bound to hear the term “rebuilding” if you hang around a sports fan for a few hours–especially a Seattle one. The construction analogy refers to the process of turning a losing team into a winning one. Last week, Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll and GM John Schneider took rebuilding to an extreme, dropping C4 on the edifice that was the Seahawks’ roster.
Starting quarterback Matt Hasselbeck, the face of the franchise: Gone, after being offered substantially more money by another team.
Starting middle linebacker Lofa Tatupu, often referred to as the “quarterback of the defense”: Gone, after refusing a pay cut.
The twin explosions completed Carroll’s disassembly of the franchise he took over in January 2010. Of the 89 players on the Seahawks roster then, only 17 are left. Folks, that’s 80 percent turnover. Makes Amazon.com look like the College of Cardinals.
And it makes Pete Carroll look like a bit of a jerk. Tatupu, who played under Carroll at USC, gave a heroic performance for his old coach in 2010–after playing injured all year, Tatupu needed surgery on both knees in the offseason. Yet the old ties and bravery didn’t mean a thing when Carroll decided Tatupu was making $1 million more than he was worth.
Hasselbeck moves to Tennessee, where he’ll mentor UW legend and NFL neophyte Jake Locker. The Seahawks’ new starting quarterback, free-agent signee Tarvaris Jackson, is a sort-of anti-Hasselbeck, possessing tremendous arm strength and foot speed, Hasselbeck’s biggest weaknesses, but lacking leadership skills and the ability to read defenses, Hasselbeck’s greatest strengths.
Why demolish the Seahawks? Because if an NFL team’s roster is a house, the NFL-mandated salary cap is the lot it sits on. In the perfect world, if you were building a dream home, you’d buy a new lot and live in your old house until construction was finished. Can’t do that in the NFL. The finite salary cap prevents you from buying new expensive players to pretty up the place while your old expensive players rust over. The best solution is to tear everything down and build it back up again.
Carroll’s moves improve the long-term outlook for the Seahawks, giving him the salary cap space to sign players that could be part of a winner two or three years from now. He signed offensive lineman Robert Gallery to a three-year contract; Gallery will lead an offensive line consisting of himself and four young, talented colleagues–all in their first or second seasons as starters, all drafted in the first or second round. Tall, fast, strong wide receiver Sidney Rice, just 24 years old, gets a five-year deal, he’ll be in his prime when the Seahawks (hopefully) reach maximum competitiveness in a couple of years.
And now the bad news. In the short-term, losing Tatupu and Hasselbeck makes the Seahawks worse. Hawks fans don’t need to be saving for playoff tickets–which is good, because with the franchise’s two most popular players gone, most will need $80 to drop on a new replica jersey.
For Seahawks fans, it’s likely to be a miserable year–we’re living in a construction zone. The roof leaks, the floorboards are warped, the damn knob on the bannister comes off every time we round the stairs. But seeing the work progress will give a little bit of satisfaction. And we can always take the weekend off and stay in a hotel (aka watch an Eagles game).